DC Brutalist Architechture

The bells and intersecting lines of the Third Church of Christ Scientist Building.

Curved bells add visual texture to the flat surfaces.

Contrast of light and shadow. Vanishing point window.

Blue sky reflected in angular windows with intersecting lines.

Straight lines, angles, and the interplay of curves.

Balcony trying to leap out of the frame.

Promenade with columns enhanced by depth of field with concrete detail. 

Forced perspective with shallow depth of field.

Trees framing typography on angular wall.

Detail of concrete with remnants of original wood form. Highly saturated colours.

Multi-levelled cascading angular forms. 

Windows reflecting nature, framed by tree, with angular sawtooth form.

A jagged structure on the edge of a verdant neighbourhood utilizing forced perspective and rule of thirds.

Geometric windows floating above blossoms in the golden hour.

Library tower in warm light in right third of frame.

Geometric levels abstracted  by perspective.

Helvetica: The Font of Our Time

Modernist designers were constantly making changes to typeface in search of the perfect font. A small Swiss typesetting firm designed Helvetica to be clean. Helvetica was exactly what the modernists were looking for. They felt it had the perfect balance between positive and negative space. Even the space between letters was perfect for comprehension with minimal effort. Helvetica was functionally invisible as a typeface.

The choice of font is extremely important to anyone trying to convey a message visually. Different fonts convey different messages, even if we don’t consciously realize it. Helvetica benefits from being message neutral. Unlike single purpose typefaces (I’m looking at you comic sans), Helvetica can be used in any number of ways; it is open to interpretation. Designers loved that Helvetica was as at home on a utility truck as it was on a corporate advertisement. Helvetica became the typeface of modern life. 

Post modernist designers rebelled against Helvetica. They claimed the type was too clean and sterile, a relic of a past obsessed with cleanliness and simplicity of form. Post modernists wanted typography with “personality.” Post modern design tries to get away from the clean design of modernism and bring “vitality” back to the work. They feel typography can tell you something instantly about the process of design and that using one typeface for an entire project does not yield an interesting body of work over time. However, modernists counter that post modernists can be like “chickens with their heads cut off.” There is no fluidity or continuity to their work. They are less about being for something than against something. They are against modernism and Helvetica.

I come down firmly on the side of the modernists. Modernist design is classic and timeless. It looks as fresh today as it did fifty years ago. There is a reason that post modernist design is also called “grunge.” Much like grunge, post modernist typography is very much of its time. It may have seemed artistic and revolutionary in the eighties and nineties, but now it just looks dated.

YouTube Art Film

This film is an experimental collage of slow motion tracking shots set to the music of Radiohead. All shots are taken from what appears to be a moving vehicle. The frames are placed on screen in bands of similarly shot tiles. Each tile is made up of either similar footage shot from slightly different angles or identical footage manipulated in post-production. Tiles with identical footage have their color, brightness, or focus changed. The shots are all wide and at a low angle, many are tilted slightly sideways. Shot durations vary between a few seconds to more than a minute.

The first “scene” consists of three horizontal bands of three repeating frames. The shots are all wide tracking shots. Each frame in the band is played at a time slightly offset from the others. Certain frames are manipulated to bring attention to a certain frame. Transitions are mostly jump cuts with dissolves between larger transitions.

Another group of shots switches between horizontal bands on only the top and bottom, and a band solely in the middle. Again, the shots are wide and tracking from a moving vehicle. As in the first scene, the footage is all from a beach and surrounding city.

The final group of shots is a single horizontal band where a portion of each frame is mirrored on the top and bottom. Only one frame at a time is in focus. The other frames are muted and out of focus. As the music builds, all of the shots speed up and begin to blur together. By the time the music ends, all the frames have melded to one single fast moving blur.

It is difficult to find much variety in individual shots, as they are all shot the same way. Despite this, I find the whole film very effective. The piece is reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s canvases. The images repeat, but there is enough differentiation to make things interesting and keep the viewers eye moving. The slow motion shots are also very smoothly done and seem to capture a moment in time even while moving. Also, there is no noticeable shaking or unintentional blur which makes me wonder how it was shot so smoothly from a car.

The one thing I would change in the piece is at the very end. When the music builds, the footage begins to speed up and change with it. However, when the music goes back to the slower tempo, the footage stays fast and blurred until the end. I would have abruptly changed the shots back in time with the music rather than continuing at a high speed. It would have fit more with everything that came before it.

Group Photo Project

Group projects can often be terrifying. Not that the work is any harder, but there is often (almost always) a person who doesn’t pull their weight. Thankfully, this experience was nothing like that. We all seemed to get on very well, cooperated fully, and respected deadlines. We set up a Facebook group and posted all of our work there. This was extremely helpful as none of our schedules allowed us to work together. After posting our photos to the group, we democratically chose the ones to be used in the presentation. No one seemed to feel that their favorites were left out. The experience was so positive, that I find it hard to think of what did not work. If anything, it might have helped if we could have taken shots together. We could have even set up our shots with the other members portraying “indifference.”

It was pleasing to find that themes came up within our shots, even if we had to shoot individually. Almost everyone came up with a shot of litter. It seemed to be a great marker of indifference and wasn’t hard for any of us to find. This gave our overall presentation a sense of continuity that can be hard to find in some groups.

The only thing I would change would be to get a better camera. I fully understand that great pictures can be taken with terrible equipment. However, it is incredibly difficult to compose a shot with no viewfinder and a two inch screen in daylight. Also, there are no controls over focus, zoom, or anything really on the library cameras. I took several shots that I thought would be my best only to find that they were out of focus, blurry, or otherwise skewed when I looked at them on my computer. Some compositional elements could have been taken care of in Photoshop (or GIMP in my case), but I’m still trying to focus on learning to take good photographs first.

This assignment has shown the importance of having just the right light, especially with limited equipment. A single passing cloud can turn a beautiful shot into noisy garbage. Also, communication was a key to the success of the project. Questions were asked and answered promptly and saved what could have been a mess considering our conflicting schedules. The schedule issue also taught a valuable lesson in time management. By setting group deadlines and giving flexibility within those limits, we managed to put together a project with little procrastination or stress.

This is the photo that I had the highest hopes for, but ended up being most disappointed in. The effect was supposed to be a shallow depth of field with a sharply focused tissue and blurred background. The camera was changed from distance to macro (its only configurable setting) and placed on the ground close to the subject. The subject was placed in the lower right third of the frame, leaving the textured grain of the granite to fill the remainder. Unfortunately, what looked great on the camera’s tiny screen did not pan out at full size. Also, tissues with brown stuff still on them are not the most attractive subject. I couldn’t see that on the screen either.

This shot is far more effective at conveying indifference, but is compositionally lacking. It was a cold winter day and everything was dead outside. As soon as we walked into the National Gallery of Art, it was filled with light and the colors of the flowers surrounding the fountain. I couldn’t believe this person was just standing there and texting apparently oblivious to the scene. I ended up pleased with the position of the man in the far left corner. Following the rule of thirds opened up the picture to what the person was ignoring. The flowers appear extra vibrant as well. They seem to have “Technicolor” look to them. This was not the result of any manipulation, but the happy accident of poor camera and mixed lighting.

The picture did not turn out nearly as well as I’d hoped. The top of the fountain is cut off, the “horizon” where the floor meets the wall is directly in the center, the tree is leaning at an odd angle, the far right column has a bad tangent with the edge of the frame, and the flowers turned out blurry.

This is a photo of a disabled homeless man panhandling at the corner of 31^st and M streets in Georgetown. This photo works compositionally with the street sloping down to the left and toward the back of the frame. The geometric lines of the crosswalk draw the eye directly to the subject. The distance from the subject suggests a loneliness and isolation reinforced by the fact that not a single person is paying any attention to the man. His position directly against the wall of a liquor store not only shows his difficulty in avoiding the cold wind, but comments on one of the most prevalent problems affecting many homeless: drug and alcohol abuse. The brightly lit stores across the street suggest a world of rampant consumerism just around the corner, yet far removed, from a man begging for change.

This was the most difficult shot to take due to the numerous cars, pedestrians, and rapidly changing light. As such, it required the most preparation, but returned the best photo in the end. It was not used in the group presentation.

Benetton and the Art of Persuasion

Beginning in 1989, retail outlet Benetton began using what may best be called activist advertising. While the images seem to have little to do with clothing, they follow the familiar path of promoting a company’s values rather than their product. By using images that seem to say: “this is what we stand for,” Benetton hopes to bring attention to issues they feel are important and sell clothes to those who agree. Is this unethical? Is it even uncommon?

In the middle of the Tyson’s Corner mall, there is an information booth about a rural Virginia military school. Signs are dominated by image, not text. What is shown are photos of uniformed boys, crosses, and the words “Christian values.” Like the Benetton ad, the images tell you little of what you are buying, but they show you the values that your purchase will support. Appealing to a specific set of values can be a highly effective tool of persuasion.

Benetton made the bold decision to come down firmly on the side of progressive values and social justice. The original ads were a simply call to racial harmony. Multiethnic subjects were photographed in friendly and intimate situations. While a photo of a white man kissing a black woman may not seem all that strange, it was still considered mildly subversive two decades ago. The images seem to suggest a company trying to say: “we are for everybody.”

Do the advertisements count as propaganda? The answer to that question often depends on how one feels about the message. I think a picture of a priest kissing a nun is a brilliant satirical commentary on the manner in which fundamentalist sexual control endangers the world, represses women, and speeds the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. A devout Catholic would probably find the depiction demeaning or offensive. I’ve known Catholics that would have had no problem labeling this “liberal propaganda.”

Persuasion is the fundamental goal of all advertising. Advertisers may choose any number of methods to persuade us to shop at their store or use their service. If a company chooses a manner that highlights serious issues instead of the latest fad, so be it. Advertising of this nature may end up being the type that is remembered longest; after all, we are still talking about the campaign twenty years later.   

Walter Iooss at the Newseum

Walter Ioos's “Stickball Players in Havana Cuba” is an excellent example of photography's ability to freeze a moment in time. The wide-angle black and white shot has an asymmetric group of subjects placed in a symmetrical background. The viewer is placed eye-level with the stickball players and is given the sense they are in the scene, possibly the pitcher. The photographer's position in the intersection not only provides a visually interesting, first-person, perspective, but gives the street corner the feel of a stage. The fast shutter speed freezes the motion of the ball as well as the swinging of the batter. All eyes are trained on the ball as it approaches the hitter. The subjects' gaze bring an intense sense of determination and focus to the picture. The deep depth of field allows every face and the entire background to remain in focus. The emphasis is clearly on the ball and the concentration of the player's faces on it. The perspective of the walls coming together at the corner in the center of the photograph draws the viewer's gaze to the center. The fixed stares of the players all drawing to the center lead the eye to the small ball suspended, motionless, in mid air.

This photo is incredibly successful in capturing the moment and excitement of young children playing stickball. This is one of the reasons I was drawn to the photo. I'm not a sports fan and have very little time for them anyway. However, when I saw this photo, I was instantly reminded of the pure simple joy of wadding up a ball of tape and hitting it with a stick. By focusing entirely on a street corner filled with kids a split-second before a swing, the photographer manages to capture something universal. It doesn't matter what the politics or economics of the country are. At that moment, in those kids' lives, nothing is more important than the game being played.

  

Experiments with GIMP!

I shot three self portraits over the last two weeks. All photos were processed using the free and open source GIMP program. All of the capabilities of Photoshop are included in GIMP. As I had never used either program outside of class, I didn't find the learning curve too difficult.

This first photo is a portrait of my son and me. It was taken using a Motorola mobile phone camera and the old “outstretched arm” technique. Using the GIMP color menu, I decreased the hue by 10 points and the lightness by 12 points. Under the same menu, I increased the color saturation by 20 points. I then applied the “sharpen” filter and increased the effect by 50 points.

This photo was taken in a bathroom with the same mobile phone camera. My face was nearly touching the mirror and my arm was held out to take the photo. I increased the brightness by 10 points and the contrast by 15 points. The “cubism” filter was applied with a tile size of 6.3 and a tile saturation of 2.1.

I took this photo in the same bathroom with the same camera. My face was further from the mirror and the camera was held closer to my face. I first adjusted the levels as shown in the class demonstration. I then increased the brightness by 15 points and the contrast by 9 points. Finally the “predator” filter was applied with default values.

Please Don't Judge Me

This is what happens when you've never used Photoshop before. Powerful programs make it powerfully easy to screw things up. It took me about an hour to do the above card and contact sheets. Hooray for non-graded participation points!

My Yard is a National Park

The following photos were taken the morning of Saturday January 22, 2011. It was 16 degrees out as I left early to make use of available light. All photos were taken with a Kodak HD camcorder set to take stills. The only setting available was a switch to flip between macro and landscape. The subject is a frozen stream in the Archbold/Glover branch of Rock Creek Park. These are three of my favorites.

This photo represents my attempt to capture a detailed section of the subject rather than the entire scene. I am holding the camera about a half foot above an area I found visually appealing.

I felt this photo worked thanks to the framing provided by the rocks on either side of the stream. The smooth ice contrasts well with the varied textures of rocks on its banks. Had the rocks not been there, the photo would have been of motionless ice. With them in place, the stream seems to move in a diagonal direction across the frame. This suggests movement in an otherwise still scene.

The varied opacities of the ice appealed to me as well. The white sections contrast nicely with nearly clear areas with leaves, trapped for the season, visible underneath. The top third of the ice also has a visually interesting texture in comparison to the smooth ice in the lower third.

I especially liked the smooth curved lines of the weathered river stones. I hoped the ovoid shaped rock in the lower left would anchor the corner of the frame.

I took this photo by standing on rocks in the middle of the stream. The creek bends at this point which gave me a good vantage point of the rock and log. I tried to capture the log head-on to foreshorten it and distort its shape.

This photo is the result of experimentation in subordinating the subject (frozen stream) to surrounding elements. I kept the stream in the lower left third of the frame. The photo is dominated by a large section of exposed bedrock with a long fallen tree teetered on top. The major boulder is framed well by the dead log and a single long branch that encircles the rock perfectly. The fallen tree not only provides a line from top to bottom, but provides an effective sense of depth as well.

Smaller loose rocks lend a strong texture to the left third of the photo. The contrast of shaded to well lit areas serve to highlight the facets of the large boulder. I also felt that the darker left half contrasted well with the brighter right.

This photo was captured by placing the camera on the log and shooting down its length. I was trying to achieve a large dominant presence without overwhelming the subject. 

This is easily my favorite of the three photos (probably because it turned out exactly as I’d hoped). The picture is dominated by a single, moss-covered, fallen log that takes up nearly two thirds of the shot. The log provides two defined lines. One is nearly vertical and meets the other that slopes diagonally from the top of the frame. The thick bed of moss lends a welcome dose of color to an otherwise muted winter scene.

The focus remains on the stream as the main subject and can still be seen across the top third of the frame. The white opaque ice seems to suggest rolling water. The log, small trees, and distant rocks frame the stream well. I especially liked that the log is out of focus while the stream is sharp. This was quite difficult using a camera with absolutely no controls.

NASA's Ear

This is a photo of a 70 meter NASA deep space tracking antenna. Its mission is to track manmade objects moving at thousands of miles an hour billions of miles away. How does one take a photograph of an object performing an action that cannot be seen?

The photo succeeds in this presentation in a number of ways. Had the photographer placed the antenna in the center of the photo and captured it head on, the resulting image would have been a symmetrical assembly of geometric shapes lost in a desert background. It may have been a compelling image, but it would have lacked the sense of purpose contained in this photo.

Capturing the dish at an off center angle creates several lines for the viewer’s eye to follow. There is the line along the oval shape of the dish running from the upper left corner to the lower right. This line frames the large area of negative space filled with thin clouds, deep blue sky, and the night’s first stars. The other, possibly more important, line leads from the base of the tower and follows the direction of the antenna’s aim directly into the sky. The off-center presentation of the dish in the left third of the frame not only enhances the antenna’s position as the primary focus, but serves to open the image to the expansive background. This effect is also complemented by the horizon’s placement well below the center of the photo.

The brightly lit antenna contrasts strongly with the black of the desert landscape, again drawing attention to the dish as the primary subject matter. Another pleasing contrast is the dark hills on the horizon against the last of the light in the sky.

The rotating base of the tower is a visually engaging collection of repeating geometric shapes and straight and curved lines. The repeating shapes provide a small area of intense texture juxtaposed against the softness of the sky and the emptiness of the black featureless desert.

The elements of the photo work together to convey the message that this enormous overtly artificial object is aimed at a point in the blackness of space that we can’t see and communicating with crafts at distances we can barely comprehend.

Photo found at:

http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/antennas/70m.html

Test. Test. 1. 2. 3.

I like when they (whoever "they" are) test the smoke doors in the Pentagon. It blares the same "red alert" siren used on every ship in every movie where a siren is going off. Along with the alarm is an oddly slow calm recording of a woman saying "touch the illuminated sign to open the door and evacuate the building." It's very creepy.